The September quarter continued the uneven economic recovery in the United States and much of the world.

For the Plumb Balanced Fund (PLBBX) for the 2nd quarter ending June 30th, 2021, finished up 6.53% and beating our blended benchmark by a sizable total of 107 basis points. We feel confident in our positive progress after a poor relative first quarter.

The world lapped the anniversary of the initial pandemic breakout in the first quarter of 2021. We all recognize that in some ways the world will never be the same.

Stating the obvious, 2020 was an unusual year on many levels including the stock and bond markets.  One would intuitively think a deadly global pandemic would naturally result in poor S&P 500 market performance.

Despite the sell off in world equity markets in September, the third quarter was a very good quarter for stocks.  The S&P 500 advanced almost 9% while the MSCI EAFA International Index appreciated 6.25%.  Even the bond market reflected moderating interest rates and advanced 1.33%.  For the year-to-date these US stocks and bond indices have [...]

The stock market rebounded from its extremely depressed level in the quarter ending June 30th. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increase of 17.8%, S&P 500 provided a total return of 20.5% and NASDAQ, was up 30.6%. All recorded multi-decade quarterly records. The Wall Street Journal reports that this performance was not enough to offset the [...]

The March 31st quarter included unprecedented worldwide economic, health and investor turmoil. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its worst start of a year in its 124-year history. This decline completely offset the strong stock market returns of the previous year, putting the S&P 500 back to the levels of December 2018. The pandemic put all the worlds’ national economies, macro and micro alike, on the same downward spiral.

Despite tepid earnings growth for the average company in 2019, broad equity markets provided very attractive returns. To the casual observer, public company earning’s growth, GDP growth and stock prices appear to have decoupled. In 2018, the stock market declined despite significant earnings growth for the underlying major indices. In 2019, the stock market soared despite minimal growth in these underlying earnings.

The third calendar quarter of 2019 was generally positive for investors, but less so than the previous two quarters. Equity markets were mixed as the S&P 500 advanced 1.7% and the MSCI EAFE ex US index showed a decline of 2.5% for International equity markets.

We are pleased to report very favorable results for the Plumb Funds for both the quarter and the calendar year. World stock markets continued their advance in the fourth quarter of 2017.